


there is a church where they whisper your name

by bazanite



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, BDSM, BDSM can save anyone, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bucky Barnes has an advanced degree in talking dirty, Dirty Talk, Dom Steve Rogers, Dom/sub, Dubiously Healthy Kink Practices, Gags, Hair Kink, Hair Washing, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, Mental Health Issues, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Praise Kink, Self-Harm, Spit As Lube, Starvation, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are mutually disgusted by the modern economy, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, rehab!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:29:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1932069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazanite/pseuds/bazanite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What you want and what you know to be true are battling up against each other like animals, tusks locked, breathing heavy into the twilight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is a church where they whisper your name

You are five hundred percent metal and two percent bone.

You go back, because that's what is expected of you. In the noise, that's what you know. You settle into the chair, bite down on unyielding rubber, and wait.

Nothing happens.

Time is only relevant to you when there's a deadline; sitting there, in the empty vault, it runs together. You count the hours with cold fingers, tapping out seconds, then minutes, then hours. Eventually, you fall into something not quite resembling sleep, and when the world is sharp again, you spit out the mouth guard and leave. Everything is wrong.

You don't think about the man on the bridge because you're not allowed. You don't think about pulling him out of the river because it just didn't happen. Instead, you clean out a safe house and settle into a comfortable routine of something you do know: precise recon.

The museum is first, but your situational awareness is out of control. A year ago--a day ago--you would have known every exit, every body in a room, but here you are now, starting at the man who looks like you but is not you, and you probably couldn't tell up from down if you tried. Something in the pit of your stomach aches.

You move on.

"Steve Rogers," you say experimentally, weighing the name in your mouth. It feels familiar--more familiar than rubber--and worst of all, comfortable.

"America's finest hero," a woman next to you says proudly, as if he were her own, as if she birthed him. "We're so lucky to have him. Not like that... that _Tony Stark_ character."

You aren't sure why, but you imagine shattering every bone in her body, one by one, then walk out.

You wander aimlessly for a while, hostile and angry. You  realize that you're circling the same block over and over again too late to pretend like it's an accident and, at a loss, sit on a low retaining wall and dig your fingers into brick until they bleed.

It's not like you're confused, not really. You don't know what to do, but you know what _not_ to do, and that's sustaining you, a little. You're not scared, either, because they wiped fear out of you on a regular schedule; fear only promotes second-guessing, and without fear, you are unstoppable.

You don't know what to do, so you follow him. He's not particularly inconspicuous, and it's laughably easy to find him in the crowd that gathers wherever Captain America goes. You watch him for a while, and when hours bleed into days and you realize that the man named Steve Rogers has no answers for you from a hundred paces away, you break into his apartment and drink his milk. You're not hungry, exactly, but even though you can't feel it in your stomach, you can feel it in your muscles and your resolve.

"Gotta drink your milk," you say in English as you put the empty jug back. "Builds strong bones."

 

You take up semi-permanent residence in an empty apartment across the way from his and spend a long time watching his life. He finds the empty milk carton and stares at it for minutes, fridge door hanging open. He almost throws it away, but sets it contemplatively on the counter. Captain America looks around his empty apartment, goes out onto his balcony, and tries to imagine you scaling the wall. When he goes back inside, you smile victoriously, but it hurts.

This is how you spend your days: watching Steve Rogers. The water in the apartment is off, so you piss in the bowl and let it sit. You haven't eaten in what feels like years, so there isn't much waste to account for. You lean against the cool glass of the sliding balcony door and watch him, laughably, do pilates on the big area rug in his living room. It's a clear shot.

If you had your SVD you could end everything right now. You could get rid of Captain America and not feel so lost anymore. It's his fault, really. If he hadn't shown up, if he hadn't been familiar, if he had destroyed Hydra and gone back to being a super hero and you had never laid eyes on him, you could have spent the rest of your life figuring out who you are.

You press your metal fingers into the flesh of your upper arm until it burns and bruises mottle your skin.

Now you have to figure out who you are to _him_.

 

He finds you, eventually. You think you let him; you make a mistake here and there, letting him catch you in the corner of his vision in crowds, leaving little pieces of yourself in whatever haunt he thinks belongs to you. He's been hunting you, but he's not as good at it as you are.

You like the cat and mouse thing. It gives you a reason to leave the empty apartment in the morning. Screwing with Captain America gives you purpose.

He catches you though, once, and it's the most worrisome thing that's happened since you pulled him out of the river. Somewhere in the middle of watching him you've lost your edge.

It won't happen again.

He finds you in an alley; you've cut through a Chinese restaurant to avoid him, but he's darted around the corner and traps you into the space between the dumpster and the door. You could scale the dumpster easy, but instead you drop to your knees, swipe, and take him down into the pockmarked concrete.

Usually you can do this unfeelingly. The wiping made you a machine. Now you feel tumultuous disgust--with everything--and you punch him to feel better.

"Bucky," Captain America--Steve Rogers--says, and it's not wavering, not weak, but there's a certain note of distress in his voice that makes you want to scream. Screaming is useless, though, and it's the mark of someone who lacks control, so you pull your metal arm back and slam it across his face. Blood sprays and bone shatters under your hand and you feel a little better.

You also feel a little worse.

"Not gon' fight you," he says brokenly through a mouthful of blood and slides a hand over your knee and you're reeling. You imagine curling up into yourself and resting your head on his collar bone but that makes no sense, so you lift him from the concrete and hurl him back down again. Something crunches and a part of you panics.

A bigger part of you feels right, feels justified.

"Buck," he says again, more of a groan than anything, and you curl your left hand into the shape of a gun and press your fingertips against his forehead. You imagine slicing your fingers into his skull until you hit grey matter, and know in an instant that you could do it if you tried.

"Bang," you say instead, quietly, and grin.

For the first time since your fight on the bridge, Steve Rogers looks at you with fear in his eyes.

After you escape him, you go back to your uncompromised apartment and pace restlessly for hours. You punch holes into the wall between the living room and the bathroom so the neighbors won't hear and stop only when the crumbling remains of drywall settle over your boots.

"I'm sorry," you say to his empty apartment, like it'll carry through the walls and over the street and settle into his bed.

His apartment stays dark for the rest of the night.

You want to scream. You don't scream. What you want and what you know to be true are battling up against each other like beasts, tusks locked, breathing heavy into the twilight.

 

He finds you in the empty space of 3 AM, the mute TV casting an unearthly glow over the living room.

"Bucky," he says, breathy, reverently, and stands in the doorway to the living room. "Are you... are you okay?"

Are you okay? One of the most dangerous killers in the world breaks into your apartment and the first thing you ask if he's okay? You frown. Steve Rogers is an idiot.

 _Are_ you okay?

"Can I touch you?" he asks. He doesn't sound timid, he doesn't sound like he's not trying to spook you. But you aren't sure what you want, so you just sit there on the floor, staring at the TV, clinging to yourself.

"Eleven," you say as Steve Rogers settles onto the couch behind you. He leans his knee against your shoulder, almost carelessly, but you know for a fact that every movement is calculated and weighed. (Why do you know that?) It feels unbearably warm, but you force yourself to endure it, even if you aren't sure why. After a while, you force yourself not to lean into him.

"Eleven?" he asks gently.

"Bodies," you say in Russian, then again in English when you remember.

You wait for him to assess; he takes a minute to puzzle out the silent news stoy and you know when he finally figures it out because he stiffens beside you.

"It's not your fault, Buck. I should have been more careful. I... we... we're supposed to protect people. There's no excusing innocent deaths. That's..." His voice tightens. "That's on me. I should have done a better job containing..."

"Containing me," you say, emotionless.

"Containing the situation," he asserts.

"I am the situation," you say and he tries to keep it in, but you can hear a quiet, frustrated sigh seep out of him. 

There's this weird patriotic optimism to him that makes you sick to your stomach. You're sure absolutely that Steve Rogers is not your friend. You imagine sharing a beer, playing golf, jogging together in the predawn glow of morning, and it is as alien to you as two flesh arms.

"Well, you're worth it," Steve Rogers says, and it's absolutely the wrong thing. You aren't worth anything. You've been abandoned, you've been used, you've been lost. You're a _killer_.

You escape off the balcony before Captain America can stand. You hear him call your name as you flee.  

 

The next time you show up in his apartment it's nearly a week later. You've been eating meagerly; you're not using your body, and you don't need the fuel. There's fruit on his counter and it makes you feel ill.

You sit at his kitchen table and wait for him. It's four in the morning, but he isn't sleeping. He comes into the kitchen within minutes of you settling in.

"I'm a walking contradiction," you laugh. "It's you. Every time I see you I think about killing you. Every fuckin' time. But I _can't_. I should be able to. It would be so easy."  He doesn't look offended when you say this; his features are schooled into a mask of gentle concern.

"Like right now. The way you're looking at me? I want to punch you. I want to dismantle your entire goddamn face."

He's silent for a minute, then: "Would you rather I be scared?"

"Yes," you say, and feel it in your bones. You stand up and move closer to him in the dark, curl your metal hand into a fist and set it over his heart. You could pull back into the small space between your bodies and punch and crack at least three ribs.

The two of you stand like that until daylight crests into the apartment. You would give anything to understand what he's thinking, but you can't bring yourself to look at his face.

Scratch that. You never want to know what he's thinking.

"Do you... will you stay?" Captain America asks you, and his voice breaks.

You smile a wry grin. "And do what? Be your housemaid? Join your team of costumed heroes? Never go outside?"

"Whatever it takes," he says, and it's so much better than _whatever you want_ you almost cry.

"You need some stability," he says, and it seems so uncharacteristic of him that it must be someone else saying it. He's been talking about you. You almost laugh at the thought, but then you realize you shouldn't really know what is or isn't characteristic for Steve Rogers and you get stuck in this loop of painful contemplation.

He almost puts a hand on your shoulder, then thinks better of it. You're glad. You don't know if you could stand to be touched right now. Instead, he clears his throat and steps away.

"Come here?" he says and it's half question, half instruction, and turns down the hallway. You follow him immediately. It occurs to you somewhere in the back of your mind that this relentless trust of command is going to get you killed and it's fucked up to boot, but you follow silently. It's easy. You'll think about it when it starts hurting.

He gives you a small bedroom with an attached bathroom. You go over it silently, looking for anything that might compromise your position. He asks if you need anything--if you want anything--and you curl your hands into fists and don't say anything.

"What now?" you say when you're done, standing at the foot of the bed, feeling contempt. He wraps his hands around his arms; he clearly hasn't thought this through all the way.

"Shout if you need me," he says, finally, looking lost, and pulls the door closed behind him.

 

You bunker in the room afforded to you. You push pillows and blankets up against the bottom of the door until it can't open; you open the window wide and jettison the screen into the street below and lean back against the foot of the bed. You sit there, with your head in your hands, as a tape of every person you've killed plays through your mind. Every dying word. Every precise bullet.

You haven't slept in nearly three days, and the textured color of the carpet is blurring into one big plane of beige.

 

Despite all signs telling you that Captain America's apartment is not a safe place, your body succumbs and you float in and out of painful consciousness for the rest of the day.

"Do you want something to eat?" he asks when you leave the room to stay awake. He's watching you carefully, and his eyes rove up and down your body. There's nothing appreciative about it; you can tell he's looking at the way your clothes hang off of you, at the way you've lost muscle and fat since the bridge, at the way shadows are punched into the sockets of your eyes.

He's been making eggs, and the smell of it makes you queasy and you say nothing. Something weird crosses his face. It's a mixture of surprise and amusement and hurt.

"Wait, you don't like eggs," he says, and scratches at his scalp. "I can't believe I forgot. Threw 'em up in the fifth grade." He laughs a little, then looks at you pointedly, almost shyly. "Do you remember?"

You've never liked eggs. Steve Rogers knows why. It hurts. You look at the floor and wrap your metal fingers around your elbow and squeeze until it burns.

"Hey, it's okay. Do you... do you want toast?" he asks, looking around his kitchen.

Your stomach roars at the thought, and you nod stiffly. You watch him make it; it's not that you think he's going to poison you, exactly, but so many things can go wrong with food when you're freezing to death behind enemy lines. It's a hard habit to drop.

When he's done, he piles four slices on a plate and sets it next to his place at the table. He gets butter from the counter and preserves from the fridge (the purple color makes you feel nauseated), and tells you to sit down.

You do it immediately and don't even think about it, but when you look up he's watching you intently, like you're an alien trapped in his friend's body and you might tear your way out at any second.

 _That sounds about right_ , you think.

He sits next to you and watches you stare at the toast. "You can eat it, Bucky, it won't bite you."

It's like there's a lock around your hands and a weird pressure settles over you. _Can_ you eat it? What if your stomach likes being empty more than it likes being full? Confusion slides in with panic and it must show on your face because Steve clears his throat.

"Eat," he commands, gently. "Trust me."

In an odd way, you do. You reach forward unhaltingly, and eat a small corner of a piece. Then more. Before you know it, all four pieces are gone. It's a lot of food. Suddenly you feel unsure.

"Is it okay?" you ask, and a furrow forms in Steve's brow.

"Is it... gosh, Buck, of course it's okay. It's fine. It's more than okay, it's good. You did good."

For a split second, you feel proud.

 

You vomit twice, after, and Steve Rogers crouches beside the monolith that is the joined form of you and the toilet and presses a damp wash cloth to the back of your neck and somewhere after you start dry heaving, you cry.

This time, he doesn't ask, just slides his fingers through your hair, running a finger across your neck, from the base of an ear to the point of your spine.

 _Semispinalis capitis,_ you think, unprompted, and imagine Captain America sliding a knife across the tendon. _Approximately 50 to 100 psi to sever._  You tense, ready for inevitable betrayal, but he just keeps stroking a warm thumb across your neck, and with a damp cheek stuck to the cool ceramic of the toilet seat, you laugh brokenly.

 "Hey," he says quietly. "It's okay. You haven't eaten in a while, right?" You look at him through teary eyes and he looks a little irritated, but not at you, at himself. Like he should have figured it out earlier. Like he should be better than he is.

You want to put your hands out and wipe the wrinkly parts off his brow forever. You want to slam your forehead against his face until you feel his teeth shatter.

"We'll go slow, it's okay. Rice. Potatoes. Some more toast if you--okay, buddy, no more toast." You must make a face, because he backpedals and smiles. His fingers are still working against your scalp, and suddenly, instead of feeling strung out and buzzed, you feel inescapably tired.

"I messed up," you say quietly, and you're not sure if it's the winter soldier saying it, or James Buchanan Barnes, or some amalgamation of them both. "How did I mess up so bad?"

"You survived. You did fine," he asserts forcefully, fingers running through your hair. "You'll be fine."

You fall asleep with your cheek on the toilet.

 

When you wake up, you're tucked into your own bed. ( _Steve Rogers' guest_ bed, a petulant voice from within reminds you.) The window's open, the screen's missing, and the bedroom door is closed tight.

Steve Rogers sits in the chair cattycorner to the bed, slumped sideways, head on a propped fist.

You watch him sleep for a while. You feel extraordinarily uneasy, but also calm, and you make yourself ignore the fright in favor of comfort.

It’s a weird trick, but you like the end results.

The room is dark except for the small night-light by the chair that you don't remember turning back on. You had almost thrown it out the window when you first arrived, but something stopped you. It concentrates a dull warm glow on his chest and you imagine rising silently from the bed and sliding a knife into that spot. He'd die without a sound.

You imagine kissing him instead, too.

A siren screams by the open window and he jerks awake, looking bleary. You think about feigning sleep for a second, but before you can make up your mind he's staring at you in the dim light.

You want to crawl inside of him. You want to peel his ribs open and hold them over his shoulders and bury yourself in the beating mess of his chest.

Lately you've been engaging in a trend of not thinking, and that's gotten you this far, so when something uncanny tells you to go to him, you crawl out of the bed and kneel in front of the last man who knows you. You put your hands on his knees and he looks startled, but you stare at him hard until the confusion is replaced with concern.

You wish desperately that he'd stop looking at you like that.

"Hit me," you say quietly and the alarm rushes back. "I need you to hit me."

"Bucky..." he whispers, quiet. "What... I don't understand."

"Hit me," you bite out. "I can't explain it," you say, but you try anyway. "I need to trust you. If you give a damn, you'll do it."

He looks at you like you've killed his dog.

You sit there together in the dark, your head at his knees like some kind of confessor, like Steve Rogers is your priest. Not for the first time, you feel guilty. Guilty that he's looking at you this way, guilty that you've even shown up in his life, guilty that you've turned his friend into something dirty, guilty that you ever knew him in the first place.

The dead people in your head get louder.

"Please," you beg, and the desperation in it kills you.

He gives you what you need, but in the last second he pulls the punch and it glances off your cheekbone. It stings like hell, but doesn't crack.

It's the worst thing he could have done.

You leave.

 

You don't come back for a while after that. You head to Chicago and try to get lost; maybe someone there will know you better than Captain America.

It's scantly a month later before the mystery of James Buchanan Barnes calls to you and you resurface in D.C. like a tide has pulled you back.

"I think I'm falling apart," you say when he finds you sitting in his kitchen.

"Tell me what you need," he says. "I'll do anything."

You wonder if he's thinking about the last thing you asked from him. You wonder if he's told himself he can give it to you now. You've done a lot of thinking about that moment, and you're not sure you can do it again. The look on his face hurt worse than the punch.

The force of your confusion wells up in you like heartburn. (Have you ever had heartburn?)

"I don't know what I need," you choke out. You look at the corner of the kitchen instead of him because whenever you slide your eyes over his face something inside of you burns. "I need to be whole."

"How do I..." His hands move uselessly. "How do I help you do that?"

You think about it for a while. You feel like you owe him. In the end, you feel empty and you shrug.

"Sam... I have this friend, Sam... he says you might not... that you might just want someone to tell you," he says uselessly. "He says sometimes when he gets new vets in his office, sometimes they just need to be told how to be normal again. How to... how to get dressed. How to make dinner. How to call someone on the phone. Is that...?"

It's like a heat-seeking round. It doesn't make sense until he says it. You look up at him and he doesn't look afraid. _This must be what strays feel like_ , you think. He tilts a searching, confused smile at you.

You look back at the floor, and say the thing you've been thinking about for months.

"Did you love me?"

He thinks about it for a minute, and you chance a look at his face. His brow is tight.

"I've always loved you."

A part of you wants to demand semantics, tell him about the different kinds of love, about loving brothers and girlfriends and dogs, but a part of you feels uselessly lost, like you're wading through swampland and you can't see the bottom of the marsh.

You're both silent for a while, then you nod haltingly at the floor.

"Your friend... seems like he knows a lot."

You can _hear_ him smile. "Maybe I'll introduce you one day."

Heavy silence stretches over the kitchen again.

"Do you... do you want a shower?" he asks after a minute and your shoulders tighten. _Do_ you want a shower?

When you give him a searching look, he frowns. You can see his gears turning; maybe this friend Sam of his is all around the mark, but not quite on it yet.

"No, you..." he tries, and sighs to a stop. He tries again, and it's firmer this time, more resolute. In command. "You need a shower. Let's go."

You stand obediently and follow him into bathroom in the hall. It's dangerously close to his room and your eyes slide over it as you pass.

 He tells you to take off your clothes and turns the tub on. While you strip, he tests the water, then pulls the spigot. Water shoots out of the showerhead and patters against the ceramic wall and you freeze. It's the exact tempo of gunfire against the hull of a helicopter.

You're trying so hard not to spook him. It's the hardest thing you've ever done. He deserves this, and beyond that, he seems to think _you_ deserve this, so, white-knuckled, you pull your shirt over your head and drop it on the floor.

You're mostly naked by the time he turns around and looks at your face and every muscle in his body tenses. He slaps the water off and you realize you're shaking.

He looks like he wants to reach out and hold you, but he doesn't.

"I can... I can help you adjust, but, gosh, Buck, you gotta tell me when something's going wrong in there," Steve says.

You shake your head jerkily. "I can do it, I'm fine, it's nothing."

"No," he says, and his voice is hard. It makes you feel better, confusingly. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

"But I need to, and that's what matters."

Steve Rogers sits heavy on the toilet seat and puts his head in his hands. He stares at the floor for what seems like an hour before scratching his scalp and looking up.

"Look... let's... let's just try something. If I tell you to do something and it feels bad, tell me. That's what you need to do. Those are your orders."

This confuses you, and it hurts, but you nod. He sighs wearily.

"Let's try a bath instead."

You don't run screaming, which you suppose is his idea of a good sign, so he turns the tap back on and fills the tub. You finish undressing and climb into the tub. It feels surprisingly good.

You can't remember the last time you took a bath.

He's pulling towels out of a cabinet next to the sink when the gravity of this thought hits you and you start laughing. You're sitting sideways in the tub and when you throw your head back it knocks against the wall and it hurts, a little, but you laugh and laugh and can't stop. The sound inches into desperation and when Steve asks you what you're laughing about, you tell him around choked gasps.

You think he's going to give you another kicked-puppy look, but to your infinite surprise, he laughs with you. It's light, a few staccato sounds, but it's genuine. It's not forced. You want to hear the sound all the time.

You want to put a fist down his trachea. You've done it before, to a scientist in Berlin. You know how it feels. You know how to handle dead people, you know how to handle death. You have no idea how to love someone. 

He stops laughing when you edge into panicked hyperventilation. You grip the edge of the tub so hard it cracks slightly under your left hand.

"Hey, hey," he says, kneeling on the bathmat by the tub. "None of this. Turn around, stretch out," he tells you, and you force your aching body long-ways into the tub. "Can I... can I wash your hair?"

You stare at the hot water knob.

"It's better if you don't ask," you tell him after a long minute of dead people laughing at you, and you know he's giving you a baffled look. "I can't explain it, okay?"

"That doesn't... seem..." He falls silent and you bet he's wondering what his friend Sam would say about all this. Moments pass, and when you feel his fingers in your hair you almost start crying.

"Hey," he says again, quieter, and you realize you're shaking again. He tilts your head back so you can look at him, but your eyes slide over his face and up the tiled wall instead. Looking at him makes a very confused part of your head hurt.

 _That's your heart, idiot_.

"It's okay," he murmurs, pulling shampoo through your hair. "You don't have to remember anything. You..." You're afraid of what he'll say next, but your body is exhausted and in the silence you can't help but relax. The water is warm and the lights are low and for the first time since you can't remember, you feel safe.

"You don't have to remember anything for me," he says as he washes your hair. His fingers go up and down, up and down, and his thumb traces a gentle pattern behind your ear. "Or for you, if you don't want to. It's... I... you don't have to be anybody you aren't," he finishes lamely.

You wonder how long he's been thinking about this, but before the silence gets too heavy he tips your head back and sluices warm bath water over your hair. For a long time after he's done with your hair, he runs his fingers along your scalp. You can feel your hair shiny and clean squeak under his fingers, but he doesn't do anything else.

You can feel it in your toes.

 _I want to kiss you,_ a part of you thinks, radically. _I want to drown you,_ another part of you thinks.

He pulls you out of the tub and drains the water. You stand there shivering before he wraps a towel around you and puts one over your head.

"Dry off, and I'll get you some clothes."

You stand uselessly in his bathroom and don't move. _I want to kiss you. I want to drown you_. It plays in your head like a broken record and you pull the towel on your head down, down around your neck and cinch it tight. You squeeze your eyes closed so hard you see stars.

"Bucky?" he asks from the doorway. There's confused hurt in his voice and you open your eyes and let the edges of the towel go as if you're a child caught stealing.

"I'm sorry," you whisper. "I'm sorry."

He has some clothes in his hands and when he comes over to you, he sets them in the chair in the corner.

"Is this--? Is this what you want?" he asks, quiet.

 _No,_ you practically scream. _I don't know what I want. I need you to want for me._

He looks at you, heartbroken, as if he's trying to glue your pieces back together. You make a frustrated, keening noise, and slide onto the floor at his feet.

Above you, Steve Rogers puts his hands on his hair and looks like he's in way over his head.

"This is ridiculous, Bucky. Get... get up. Stand up."

You don't think about it before you're standing. You stare at the floor and feel ashamed, and that feeling makes you uncomfortable. 

The silence in the room is palpable. The only thing you can hear his is breathing, heavy and unsure. Then he cautiously reaches up and wraps his fingers around your throat, above the towel. His thumbs settle into the space beneath your chin.

He looks horrified, but suddenly there's a slight pressure there; it's just a little bit harder to breathe, and the crushing weight that's been hanging over you for days--months, years probably--slips out of you in a tight breath. The noise in your head all but disappears.

Your eyes slide closed and you think about how right it feels, like there's metal at your back and rubber in your mouth; it makes you feel like everything is fixable. His hands are warm and a thumb slides against your trachea and you can feel your pulse beat hummingbird-time against his fingers. You breathe shallow.

"Bucky--" he says, and the trepidation in his voice plucks a string of unease inside of you. The comfort dissipates and suddenly you're tense. You want to put your hands on his hands, want to make him squeeze harder, but he steps back and looks exhausted and you can't bring yourself to move.

"This is dangerous, Buck," he says, and you know he doesn't mean a bullets-and-knives kind of dangerous, but the real kind, the kind that leaves people broken and afraid. "When did you sleep last?"

It probably makes sense to him, but for you it's a radical change of topic. It surprises and infuriates you. Before awareness crawls across Steve's eyes, you've wrapped a leg around his, an arm around his bicep, and he's on his back.

You want to say something biting, something witty, maybe, but you can't find that part of James Buchanan Barnes inside of you today, so you make a useless, wounded-animal sort of noise, and punch him.

When you pull back again, he looks _terrified_ , and something in you is alarmed to realize that, for the first time in years, you're half-hard. You leap off of Steve Rogers like he's made out of lava and shut yourself in your room.

It's a wonder you don't go sailing off the balcony instead. It's a wonder you don't throw yourself onto the pavement below. It'd be better for everyone.

 

You pace restlessly until Steve leaves the pile of clothes outside of your door and you pull them inside in the middle of the night when you know he's asleep. You don't leave the room for three days. You piss as little as possible and every time you stand up to walk into the adjacent bathroom, the walls tilt dangerously and your body trembles.

 _You've survived worse_ , you tell yourself.

Late on the fourth day, Steve Rogers knocks gently on your door. You're sitting in the corner between the bed and the wall and you don't answer (partly because you don't think you have the energy and partly because you're still feeling like an animal caught in a trap right before it decides to gnaw its own leg off).

"Bucky," he says into the silence, and you want to not listen, but you can't help it. "Buck I..." You can hear him lean against the door. "I want to let you know you can't scare me off. Maybe you want to. Maybe you don't. I hope you don't. But... we've lived through some pretty rough stuff, you know, and I'm..." He sighs. He didn't practice this speech very well. "I want to let you know that I'm not going anywhere."

"I think a lot about killing you," you say in response.

There's silence on the other side of the door, then a frustrated noise.

"I'm coming in," he says definitively. "If you don't want me to, tell me."

Operating command says _if it feels bad, tell me_ , so you say nothing. You want to stand up, look strong when he comes in, but you don't have the energy and the door pushes open so you try to wedge yourself even further into the corner to escape him.

He ruins this plan; he comes around the side of your bed and kneels down and looks at you in the eye. You feel vulnerable and tense.

"I know you think you're supposed to be in charge of whatever's going on in your head," he says, and this sounds a lot more exact than his previous sentiments. Improvisation works for him. "But I don't think that's right. You're no more the Bucky I knew when we were teenagers than I'm that Steve Rogers. Stuff happened to us. We're not..." he waves a frustrated hand, "Stagnant. You're made up of all the pieces you've ever been. I don't know if you think I want you to be _my_ Bucky again, but here's the thing, pal, you _are_ my Bucky. You always will be. Even if you think about killing me."

The weirdest bundle of emotion you've ever experienced settles into your stomach.

"Now, what do you want?" he asks. Commands, really. There's no room for second-guessing. Your mission is to answer him.

"Hungry," you say quietly, and even in the dark you can see relief crest over Steve's face. "Was that the right answer?"

"Yes, it..." you see him thinking, and you can tell the instant when he realizes about how long it's been since you ate, if not longer. "It absolutely is."

He pulls you off the floor and marches you--you're weak and it feels awful, but you know what it feels like, and the familiarity is important--into the kitchen and sits you in one of his too-comfortable dining chairs. When his back is turned you slide off and sit hunched on the floor, your back against the table leg.

"Natasha says these are good for--Bucky?" Panic edges into his voice when he turns away from the cabinet and can't see you.

"S'fine. Chairs are too soft." You feel extraordinarily dizzy. You feel like a disappointment and try to climb back up into your seat.

"No, you don't... just stop," Steve says, and you stop. "It's okay. You can sit wherever you want."

You can hear him pull a bowl out of the cabinet. He plunks something hard into it, then opens the fridge and pours milk into the bowl. When he comes back around the edge of the table and hands it to you, you're leaning heavily on the table to keep upright.

"Jeez, Buck, you're half-starved to death." He sits sideways in the chair next to you. "Don't ever let it get this bad again."

You can barely make your fingers work, but you scoop out the half-crisp, half-soggy pieces of wheat cereal and eat slowly.

He watches you eat, one hand propping up his head on his knees. The other one is carding softly through your hair. You don't notice when it happens so much as realize it's already happened.

You eat one and a half of the three grainy biscuits. Every bite is an undertaking, and feel stuffed beyond comprehension.

"Am I going to throw up?" you ask, feeling small.

"Probably," he says. "But you've got to start somewhere."

"Thanks," you tell the floor. "...You remember how I tried to kill you, right?"

He smiles.

"Well, you've also spent a lot of time taking care of me, Buck. Figure it's time to return the favor."

 

You do throw up, but it hurts marginally less than throwing up toast, and when you're done, Steve puts you in bed.

"Tell me a story?" you ask humorously and recognition flickers over his face. You vaguely remember Steve Rogers telling the best stories. Remembering feels weird, like it's not supposed to happen, but it doesn't feel monumental at all. It's not like there's a memory where something wasn't before, just like it was lost for a minute.

"Minus ten points for creativity," you quip when he distractedly tells you the story of Goldilocks.

He doesn't say anything. Then: "Have you been hurting yourself? When you were in the bath..."

You think about the bruises on your arm and curl over on yourself; you put your fingers in the spaces where your flesh is the darkest.

"Sometimes at night... feels right," you tell him with a half-shrug. "Getting hurt makes sense."

You wait for him to puzzle this out.

"Don't do it again," he says sternly. He's telling you what to do, and you know that logically he's right, that this is something you've agreed on, even weakly, but it's the only thing keeping you sane. It's the only thing that connects the pieces of you. You're suddenly alarmingly awake and pissed off. All systems go.

" _Make_ me."

Now, now you would give the world to know what's going through his head. You expect a hurt look, some backpedaling, a little acquiescence, but he stands instead and every part of you tenses.

"I'm not going to hit you," he says quietly, dangerously. "I don’t know if that's what you want. I don't know if you even know what you want, but I'm not going to do it. You deserve better. You _are_ better. Natasha won't tell me about what happened in the Red Room but I--" here he falters slightly. "You're more important to me than that."

This is when he leaves you. Just stalks out like he's never coming back and panic surges in you. You want to follow him, to beg, to apologize, tell him you'll be normal, but your stomach cramps when you sit up and you fall back into bed and swear.

He's back in a second and it disgusts you that you're surprised he came back at all.

"I'm sorry," you tell him, feeling small. "I'll be okay, you don't have to worry, I--" There's something in his hands, wrapped around his fist, and you can't tell what it is until he's hauling your arms up against the headboard and tying them securely in place. His knot is expert.

"I know you could break out of this," he tells you, and rubs his thumb along the hollow space in the palm of your metal hand, "but you won't, will you?"

You stare at him, amazed, and shake your head.

"Because I know what's better for you than you do?"

You nod.

"Good," he says softly, and runs his knuckles against your jaw. You feel undone, and every muscle in your body expands and you ache.

"Do you want me to stay here tonight?"

You have no idea. You feel like you've lost all touch with reality.

"Answer me," he says firmly, but gently.

"Please," you say after a minute. He settles into the chair in the corner and you watch every movement he makes, unblinking.

"Go to sleep," he says, eventually. "You're fine. You're safe. I'll be right here."

 

You wake up feeling shockingly rested. There's warm mid-afternoon light blooming around your window and the first thing you notice is Steve, curled up in the arm chair in a way that makes your back hurt and your neck sore. You want to get up and fix him, stretch him out in your bed and scare away all of his pains, but when you move, your hands jerk roughly against the headboard. The rope tightens a fraction and you feel good. There's no other word for it.

It's a light noise, but he stirs anyway. You watch him wake up, breath tight in your chest. Maybe last night was a dream. Maybe the Steve from last night isn't a Steve you'll ever be able to find again.

"Hey," he says, groggy. "How'd you sleep?"

You wrap your hands around the tie he's bound you with and think. "I don't feel dead anymore."

"Progress," he exclaims dryly, but not hurtfully. "What do you want?"

Is this going to be a thing? Steve Rogers goading you into asserting your base bodily needs? You pull on the tie and look at the ceiling.

"I need to..." you try, try to get a rolling start on your feelings. "I need to..." You drop your eyes to look at him, and his face is a mask of stoicism.

You know what you need, but you don't say it.

"Tell me," he says. _Because I know what's better for you than you do._

"I need to..." You're not pulling on the tie now so much as making a fist around it. You want him to understand without saying it. "I need break something."

He doesn't look alarmed anymore, or hurt, or confused. You think maybe, in this, he understands.

"I haven't killed you, but... I'm supposed to?" you say, and it's suddenly spilling out of you. You can't stop it. "I'm supposed to kill you because that's what I'm designed for, my mission is to kill you, and you're sitting there and I haven't killed _anything_ and I haven't... I haven't died, so, I have to do... I have to do what I was designed to do, right? I don't want to, but I have to..." You aren't sure where it's coming from. If he had asked you to explain it a day ago you couldn't have. It's like you've tapped some weird well of broken honesty and it's not running dry any time soon. You yank desperately at the tie--not to break it but to make it tighter--and you're pretty sure you start to cry.

He watches all of this, face slowly falling into grim horror. It's not because he's scared of you, or disgusted, you realize. You're pretty sure watching you hurts him, so you crane your head back and look at the ceiling again and take deep, wet breaths.

You don't hear him get up, but suddenly Steve Rogers puts a warm hand on your forehead, then reaches up and unties you. The fabric falls loose and you want it back so bad it makes you sick. You're starting to understand why.

"Get up," he tells you. "Come with me."

You follow him barefoot through the living room, then the kitchen, but you stop dead when he opens the apartment door. You can't help it, you back up a step and give him a wary look.

"God, Buck, how many times do I have to tell you? I'm not going anywhere. I'm sure as hell not throwing you out."

You think you start to believe.

He escorts you out of the apartment with a hand on your back, then herds you like a frightened child into the elevator. It dings a dozen times before you're in the basement and when the doors slide open you sigh with understanding.

Steve takes you over to the corner, sits you on a bench, and with delicate precision, knits red tape around your hands in a boxer's wrap. His fingers linger a second longer on the pulse at your wrist than strictly necessary and you watch his face for any signs of... of anything. But he puts you back on your feet and holds up his hands.

You flex your fingers.

"Is it... are you going to be okay? The last time we fought, you know, I think I kicked your ass."

He laughs.

"You couldn't knock out a toddler right now, pal. I practically had to carry you down here."

He's right. You feel weak, but also determined. The first punch makes him grunt a little, then laugh again.

"You were saying?"

"Maybe I underestimated that relentless soviet training."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," you say, and grin.

 

When you get back in the elevator, you feel like a real person again. Your stomach is growling painfully, but you're both covered in sweat and smiling.

"Told you I kicked your ass," you laugh, and unwind the red wraps from your hands and hand them over to him one at a time.

"I'll believe it when I see it, pal."

You aren't sure where it comes from, but he's standing there in the gold light of the elevator, leaning on the railings in the corner, flush and grinning, and you _need_ to kiss him. You need to wrap your body around his and never leave his apartment, ever again. You need to take Steve Rogers into your veins and make him a part of you.

You don't need to hit him.

You don't realize he's been watching you too until he clears his throat.

"Come here," he says, haltingly, and leans forward to pull the emergency stop on the elevator.

Every muscle in your body stills and you stand there for a second, staring at him. Current operating procedure: _tell me if it feels bad._ And it doesn't feel bad, not exactly, but it feels dangerous, like you're staring down a minefield. You don't know what you want, but even worse than that, you don't know what he wants.

Mission objective: stop being a tool. Make your own decisions.

Shakily, like he might disappear if you move, you step forward. You're not sure what you expected, but you certainly didn't expect this: he wraps a tight arm around your waist and another one around your shoulders and puts his face in the crook of your neck. You lean against him, wide-eyed. It feels surprisingly comfortable, but then you realize he's crying so quietly you almost don't notice. You want to step back, ask him what's wrong, put your hands on his face and calm him, but Steve Rogers just clings to you desperately and you stand there, feeling confused.

"I'm sorry," he finally says, and you don't know what to do. "Bucky, I'm so sorry. I should have gone looking for you, I shouldn't have..."

You think about falling out of a train. You think about the exhibit in the museum, of Steve trapped in an iceberg.

Before you can help it, you're laughing. He pulls away, looking a little hurt and a little wary, but you smile at him and it turns into confusion.

"Just... what you said. 'We're made up of all the pieces we've ever been,' right? We're here now. It... we can't change what's happened. Why bother?"

He gives you an empty stare, and panic washes over you. This whole 'making your own decisions' thing is clearly going catastrophically wrong. He doesn't want you to turn his arguments around on him, he doesn't need you to be the walking architecture of everything you've ever been. He needs the Bucky he lost.

Abort mission.

He steps closer to you and instinctively you move to drop all of your weight into his instep but he wraps his hands around your shoulders and hauls you up into the corner of the frozen elevator and you're too exhausted from hunger and the sparring to do anything but let him. You feel caged, and it feels terrifying and right all at the same time. God knows you deserve it. He'll lead you off the elevator and lock you in the spare bedroom until you beg him to give you a purpose. He'll make you a machine again, because that's all you're good for.

But to your unending confusion, he stands there like that, with you trapped between his body and the corner of the elevator and _watches_ you from six inches away.

His breath is hot over your ear and you focus your gaze somewhere in the middle of his chest. Half of you is screaming to escape, and half of you has already accepted it. You shift your gaze and stare at him defiantly.

"Why are you here?" he asks, finally, and it's so completely out of left field that you genuinely have _no idea_ how to answer it. "Why did you come here?"

Your mouth works uselessly for a minute.

"If you let me move I can leave," you finally say, spiteful, but it hurts when it comes out.

"Shut up," he says, harsher than he probably meant. It's the most frustrated you've seen him since you showed up. He looks like his entire world is collapsing. "You know that's not what I mean. You know I ne... need you here. I want to know why _you_ want to be here."

You have no idea. It just seemed like the thing to do. Follow Steve Rogers around. Let him try to fix you. You didn't have much else going on after Hydra. You drop your gaze and stare at his chest.

"Maybe I was just looking for a different kind of collar," you say defiantly but as soon as you voice it you want to take it back. He takes an alarmed step away from you, jerky like you've punched him. When you chance a look at him, it hurts. He sets the hurt shape of his mouth into a rigid line and turns on the elevator again.  

You ride the remaining floors in silence and when the elevator doors ding open and he steps out, you say, false bravado, forced laugh, "I'm just messin' with you."

He turns and puts a hand on the doors, leans close to you. You swallow a nervous bundle in your chest.

"No," he says after giving you a long, hard look. "I really don't think you were."

You follow him to the apartment. There's a trembling sort of panic rising within you and you and when he opens the door and steps back to let you in first, you look at the carpet instead of him. Steve Rogers is the one person in the whole world who doesn't hate you (despite having the best reasons to) and for some inexplicable reason you can't leave that alone.

You want to say something to him, but he goes immediately to the kitchen and takes something out of the fridge. When he comes back, he doesn't look at you, just walks past you into the hall. You stand in the entryway uselessly.

 _You definitely meant it_ , you think dejectedly. _You will only ever be a tool._

"Come here," he commands from down the hall, voice acrid, and you follow unthinkingly.

When you round the corner to the bedroom he has the red hand wraps in a hand and he's standing next to the chair in the corner. A weird heat rushes through you.

"Sit down," he says, and there's an edge in his voice that you wish you could pinpoint. You walk cautiously from the door and sit in the chair and before you know it, Steve's kneeling in front of you, binding your hands expertly together. He uses both wraps, winding it halfway to your elbows. The material is stretchy enough that, when you make half fists against the material, it breathes but does not give.

You feel dizzy with relief.

"Is this what you want?" he asks, and you don't hear disgust or sadness in his voice, just the aching desire to fix you.

You don't say anything. You don't know anything. You want it to make sense.

"Because otherwise you feel like you're going to..." he makes a useless gesture. "Get lose? Hurt someone?"

It figures that Steve would figure out what's going on in your head before you do. He was always better at it, anyway. He looks at you hard for a minute, then turns around and picks something off the bed. It's a bottle of green stuff, and he cracks it open and hands it to you.

"Drink it," he says, a little more gently than a minute ago. You clutch at it with both hands and he squats against the side of the bed and watches you drink. It tastes surprisingly good.

He rubs a hand through his hair and sighs. "'Tasha says there was too much fiber in the stuff you had been eating. That's why you threw it up. This is... vegetables and fruit and vitamins."

There's an entire world in the way he looks at you, like he's trying to figure out your deepest secrets and protect them all at the same time. You drink silently and wonder what the conversations with his friends are like. Especially the ones with Romanov. You think you might not have remembered her earlier, when you were fighting. You certainly do now. You want to ask about her, but you're balancing on the edge of something precarious and you're not sure what could push you off.

You get through half the bottle before your stomach clenches tight and he stands and takes it from you.

"Kinda thought I'd have to hold your mouth open," he says wryly and absently brushes a hand through your hair. Suddenly you feel unspeakably exhausted and you lean into the touch.

He stands there for a while, fingers stroking a gentle pattern on your scalp.

"What's going on, Buck?" he asks, quietly. "Tell me what's you're thinking."

The idea of opening your mouth and letting it out of you makes your jaw hurt. It feels like a sickness that you'll contaminate him with.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," he adds carefully. "But... you can trust me. I promise."

 _Tell me if it feels bad_.

You sigh, and somehow halfway through it turns into speech.

"You know how when we were twelve and you knew you were meant to do something?" you ask, and the rhythm he has falters. It must be monumental to him to realize you remember things, but for you it just feels commonplace. "And then Howard Stark strapped you down and made it so you could be that person you needed to be? So the entire world made sense, finally." You can feel a wary tension in him, and you stare blankly at the wall across the room.

"It... it's sort of like that, I guess. But as soon as you realize you're doing it, as soon as everything makes sense, somebody says, 'oops, sorry, we made a huge mistake, we're going to take it all back now. Good luck with your life,' and now you have new problems that are even worse and you don't know how to... you have absolutely no way of knowing... there's something wrong with me, Stevie, I can't fix it, I don't know how to fix it... like I can't even do one thing right..." Suddenly the panic's real and you're breathing hard and you want to crawl into the earth and never come out. You put your bound hands up and push your fists into your eyes until you see stars.

He drops to his knees in front of the chair and pulls your fists down; he wraps his hands around your neck, a thumb on each side of your jaw, and makes you look at him.

"What do you want?" he asks you, firmly. "Right now. What do you need to feel like you've done something right?"

Your gaze slips off of him like he's made out of oil. You know the answer instantly, but it makes you feel ashamed.

"Bucky," he warns. "Tell me."

Mission objective: be a person. Make your own decisions.

"Can you just keep..." you gesture loosely at your crown. "Makes me feel like I've made the right decision somewhere."

He looks confused for an instant, then gloriously relieved. He climbs up into the chair behind you but it's far too small to hold you _and_ Captain America, so you slide to the floor at his feet and lean back against the chair between his legs and suddenly he's touching you again, carding his fingers rhythmically through your hair.

It feels amazing. Better than the gentle touches he's given you since you showed up; he's dedicated now, scratching against your scalp in wide circles with both hands. You make a noise that's somewhere between a whimper and a groan and part of you feels embarrassed, but then Steve answers with his own small sound of contentment and you couldn't care less.

When you lean back, you can almost pretend like you don't know what it feels like to kill a man.

"Buck?" Steve asks and you realize you're tense again. "Hey," he tries, but it's no use. You feel suddenly hyper-stimulated. Your teeth are on edge and you're shivering and there's something sick crawling out of your stomach and you want to punch something. You don't deserve this.

"Hey," he says again, this time sharper, and his hands knot roughly in your hair and he cranes your neck back so you're looking at him upside down in the chair. The pressure in your scalp is sharp and you stop trembling instantly.

"It's okay," he says pointedly. " You're good. You're doing fine."

It helps a little, and you relax again, but when he lets go you curl tight into yourself at his knees. When he touches you again you almost jump; Steve wraps a hand under your jaw from behind and runs his thumb across the base of your neck, left to right, like a metronome.

You shiver, and the panic seeps out of you.

"You're fine," he whispers, over and over again. "You're doing good."

This is how you fall asleep, one of his hands in your hair, one tight against your neck, caging  you against his knee.

 

When you wake up, everything feels trembling and sore and warm.

"You keep carrying me to bed you're gonna have to ask for my hand, Steve Rogers," you say dryly, and he looks up from the chair. He's been drawing--you, you realize dimly--and he sets the notebook on the windowsill.

There's a screen in the window again, but it's still open.

"How do your shoulders feel?" he asks, and stands.

"My shoulders?" You realize distantly, like you're trying to remember a dream, that your arms are still bound. You have them pressed up against your upper body, and when you haul yourself up to sitting, the muscles between your elbows and your neck burn.

"Oh," you say dimly. "Not good, but... it's okay?" You don't mean to make it a question, and Steve gives you a pointed, unamused look.

"They hurt," you try again. "But... in... kind of a good way. Mostly from sparring, I think."

He doesn’t look disgusted, though, just perches on the edge of the bed and slowly starts unwrapping your arms. He's unbearably close and balances your elbow on his knee as he slowly unwinds the wrap. As the wrap comes off, your skin starts tingling uncomfortably, and it settles deep in your muscles. You frown. But when he's done, he takes your right arm into his lap and starts to massage.

"Do you have nightmares?" he asks you after a minute. You shake your head, no, then think about it a minute.

"I mean, I guess I do. Just don't remember 'em when I wake up is all." He nods thoughtfully and works at the muscles at the base of your hand. "Why?"

"I do," he says after a stretch of silence, then shakes his head. "Wanna know something crazy?" he asks you, fingers digging lightly into the muscles around your shoulder. "Gallon of milk cost what... fifteen cents when we were kids?"

You nod slowly and you think you see him smile.

"Three fifty today. Can you believe that? First time I bought groceries I think I nearly had a heart attack."

"Inflation isn't exactly a 21st century invention," you quip, then add, fondly: "Idiot." He looks at you sharply, then smiles.

"Hey. Show some respect for your elders."

You sit there for a few minutes while he massages feeling back into your arm. You decide to not point out that you're technically older than him now. Overall you feel amazing--better, healthier than you have in months--but doubt still finds a way to sneak in.

"Why do you care so much?" you ask him before it can sit in you and eat its way out. "You're investing all of your time in a totally lost cause."

He doesn't look shocked by this turn of events. You think you might not be able to surprise him anymore, and you think this feels good.

"Yeah, well, you're trying, and anyway you shake it, Buck, that's real important."

Your arm feels better now, kind of tingly and warm, and you find yourself wishing you could feel like this all the time. But then he extends your left arm and you both seem to realize the problem at the same time.

"You don't have to..." you say, pulling your arm back into the hollow of your body. But he gives you a stern look and you fall quiet. He looks back at your arm like he's trying to work out a puzzle. Suddenly he's crawling over your body and settles on your knees. It's alarmingly intimate and you feel hot. You almost miss his question.

"Can you feel anything with it?" he asks, running his fingers along the space where it connects to your shoulder.

You shake your head.

"Really? Nothing?" he asks, amazed.

"Why would I? It's a tool. You don't want a tool to feel. It would be a structural weakness."

He makes a contemplative sound, then digs his thumbs gently into the space between your shoulder and your collar bone and you feel a million years of tension explode to the surface. You make a choked and undignified sound and drop your head into your hand. He pulls his hands back like he's been burned.

"Did that hurt?"

"No it..." You clench your teeth. "I mean, it did, but... I didn't notice how bad it hurt 'till right now. Guess I've been ignoring it for a while."

"Do you want me to stop?" he asks, looking alarmed.

"Please, no, please don't," you stammer.

He warily slides his thumbs over your skin in a smooth line and you groan weakly.

"How long has it been hurting?"

"Near 'round forever," you guess. He moves slowly and carefully around the scarred coupling and the feeling is simultaneous agony and bliss.

 

Steve works at your shoulder for what seems like hours, and eventually he stops touching you and sits back, looking pleased with himself, but tired. You like it. Weary success is a good look on him. You lift your arm and rotate your shoulder and are surprised to find an extended range of motion. You laugh, surprised. The tool that they attached to you was crippling you.

You aren't sure why, but he's looking at you like he's proud of you.

"What now?" you ask.

"That's up to you," he says, getting off the bed. "What do you want?"

You know exactly what you want, but you take a second to think it over. He doesn't say anything.

"Uh. I didn't throw up last time. Toast?"

He makes a face, like maybe he thinks your choice isn't a great one, but mission objective is still _make Bucky a person_. This time you stay with him in the kitchen while he makes it, leaning up against the counter.

You watch him work silently and feel choked.

"Hey," you say after a second of careful thinking, "can you... can you turn around for a sec? Wanna tell you something."

He does, and there's this look of cheerful curiosity in his eye that's so completely Steve Rogers that it makes your heart hurt.

"I lied. I don't really want toast."

"Jeez, Buck, I've already put it in--"

"No, I mean, the toast is fine, but when you asked me what I wanted... I wanted to say something else." Wary apprehension crosses his face.

"You're not going to ask me to hit you again, are you, 'cause I don't know if..."

"Nah," you say, trying to smile. It doesn't work so well. Your heart's beating like it might burst out of your chest. You're one of the most deadly killers in the world and you can't look Captain America in the eye.

"Hey, you can tell me," he says gently. "Haven't scared me off yet."

"Yeah, well, this one's a doozy." You tilt your head back and stare at the ceiling. This was a huge mistake. You're ruining everything. Should have kept your mouth shut.

"Bucky," he says firmly, suddenly inches away from you. "Tell me."

"Want you to kiss me," you mumble, then take a deep breath and enunciate. "I want you to kiss me."

He takes a surprised step back and you look back down at him. It hurts more than you had expected.

"Hey, nevermind, just forget it, if you don't want--"

"God, no, I just... I don't know if that's such a great idea, Bucky."

You examine your hands. There are faint red lines running crisscross over your flesh palm and up your arm from the wrapping and you clench your hands to stop the shaking.

Mission objective: humanity.

"Is that the Steve Rogers that's in charge of himself or the Steve Rogers that's in charge of me that's saying that?"

He looks confused.

"It's just," you start shakily, "are you saying that because you don't want to or because you don't think I should want to?"

He looks confused, then suspicious.

"Where's this coming from, Buck?" he asks, and you take a deep breath.

"Because when I'm with you, things make sense, and I have this feeling, I've had it since that night you found me outside that restaurant, and maybe I'm crazy, maybe this is just further evidence that I'm losing my god damn mind," you laugh brokenly, "but I can't help but feel like everything would make more sense if I kissed you."

He stares at you for a moment.

"Does this have anything to do with the..." He makes a vague tying gesture.

You gesture helplessly.

"Sum of the parts, or whatever. Everything's connected, right? S'complicated." You feel deflated. Should have just eaten your god damn toast and stayed quiet. Kept it like it was. Let him take care of you. Stayed broken.

"Forget I mentioned it."

A remarkably uncomfortable silence stretches over the kitchen that the toaster interrupts. You both look at it.

Before your brain registers what's going on, he's stepped into your personal space again and spans a hand over your hip and one into the space between your neck and your shoulder and is kissing you.

He pulls back and looks like he's more surprised than even you are, but then he' s kissing you, and again and again until each kiss runs into the next and you can feel yourself grinning like an idiot against his mouth. Before you know what's happening his hands are all over you, and you're gasping into his mouth and somehow in the middle of all of it he's hoisted you onto the kitchen counter and has you pulled bodily against him.

Your situational awareness is _shit_.

He's curling his fingers into your waistband when reality seems to crash back into the both of you and he pulls away, breathing deep.

"Shit," he says, and it sounds weird and divine coming out of him, flushed and horny symbol of patriotism. He kisses you again, like he's not quite sure he can escape, then has to step full away from you and lean heavy on the opposite counter. " _Shit_."

His phone rings.

He puts a hand over his mouth and gives you a long look that you can't interpret before he answers it. A small part of you feels like a child, feels like knocking it out of his hand and demanding his attention. But you've waited this long, right?

 He makes a few noises of agreement, mutters a single _no, it's fine_ , then hangs up.

"I have to go rescue the Chinese ambassador from aliens," he says like he's telling you he has to fix a flat tire.

"I..." He runs a frustrated hand through his hair and looks away from you. "Don't go anywhere?" It's more of a question than you would like, like he suspects you might.

A heavy sigh comes out of him all at once, then he steps forward again and curls a hand around your knee.

"Don't," he says more firmly this time, "go anywhere." He looks like he wants to kiss you again, gets five inches away from it, then makes a frustrated noise and steps back.

"I'll be right back." Something in his voice makes you feel like he's trying to convince himself. "I promise."

He leaves the bread in the toaster and leaves you sitting on the kitchen counter. The door swings slowly shut behind him and you try to pretend like you don't feel dizzy and abandoned.

You can't pretend like you're not so hard it hurts, so you sit on the edge of your bed and jerk yourself off in ruthless, economical fashion. When you come it's stiff and uncomfortably electric, like someone has jammed a nine-volt battery under your muscles. After, you try to remember the last time you got off. You wish desperately that the day had gone differently.

You think about shooting the Chinese ambassador.

 

When he comes back two nights later, you've worn a literal track in his carpet from your pacing. Somewhere between his leaving and returning you've worked yourself into a panicked rage and dealt with it the best way you know how. The upholstery on his couch is torn, there are cracks in his kitchen counters, and big gashes in the paint from where you drew your metal fingers down the hallway walls. A few of his finer pieces of furniture are broken into spindly bits.

He takes all of this in with a weary, distracted look, then disappears into his bedroom without a word.

 _Talk to me,_ you want to scream, crouched and bristling in the corner. _You_ left _me!_

"Come here," he calls almost the instant the thought crosses your mind. His voice sounds wrecked, like maybe he's been screaming. You want to stay furious, but the sound of it worries you, and you stretch out from your corner and go to him immediately.

You've never been in his room before, but the door is pulled wide open and he's standing in front of a mirror, leaning heavy on loose fists that he's curled on top of the dresser. The windows are wide open and pushing a cool spring breeze into the room. It smells like lilacs.

When you come in, he looks up at you in the mirror and makes a small sound of unease.

"Bucky, could you, do you think you could..." he looks exhausted, and a hundred years old. (You'd laugh at that thought, later.) "Bath?"

Something about this exhausted Steve Rogers seems broken and wrong to you, but you dutifully go into his bathroom and crouch by the tub. He comes in slowly behind you, pulling off the uniform one piece at a time, leaving it in a messy trail on the bathroom floor and climbs into the tub before you even finish running the water.

When you turn off the tap, he sits there and doesn't say anything for a long time, until you start to panic and the water turns cool.

"Almost lost Tony," he finally says, detached. He stares vacantly at the wall opposite the tub, then seems to come back into himself and puts a damp hand on the side of your head, caresses your temple with a thumb.

"Glad you're still here. Was worried. Everything seems a little easier now."

"I'm not going anywhere," you say, and for the first time ever, you think you mean it.

 

After he gets dressed, it takes about four seconds of being in the kitchen before he notices the toast sitting old and forgotten in the toaster.

"Jeez, Buck," he says with a sigh. "Have you eaten since I left?" You're pretty sure he already knows the answer. "What am I going to do with you?"

"I can think of one thing," you say without thinking, and he goes rigid.

He turns around and surveys you, then slides his gaze across the miscellaneous damage of his apartment. It's like he's seeing it for the first time since coming home.

"Bucky," he says slowly. "Did you break my house?"

"Technically only a little," you say with a grin. There's something dangerous in the way he's looking at you, and you like it. You feel restless and reckless. He doesn't push you up against a wall, though, or do any of the filthy things that are running through your head. Instead, he turns around, gets a bottle of the weird green juice out of the fridge, and hands it to you.

"Drink it," he commands, and you feel slightly let down. You don't realize how hungry you've been until it hits your tongue and you finish the whole bottle in seconds.

He doesn't look pleased. He looks pissed. Something small creeps inside of you and feels ashamed.

"I'm sorry," you say hesitantly, holding the empty bottle out to him. "I should have... been better..."

Steve takes it from you and pitches it--harder than strictly necessary--into the wastebasket.

"Are you going to vomit?" he asks, still looking irate.

You shake your head. In fact, you still feel a little hungry.

"Good." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Go into your room and sit on your bed." The unspoken _and think about what you've done_ hangs between you. "I'm going to... clean up."

"I can help," you offer uselessly.

"No," he snaps. "Do as you're told."

For the first time ever, operating procedure _because I know what's better for you_ and _make your own decisions_ butt up against each other and you feel hurt and conflicted. You know he's pissed, you know he's pissed at you, but you're offering to fix it and he's... he's...

It makes your head hurt. You leave the living room and go sit on the end of your bed and put your head in your hands.

You thought he was trying to give you the tools to help yourself but in the end he treats you as much like a dog, like a weapon, as the people you escaped. You dig your thumbs into the space between your eyes and your nose so hard you see stars. You want it to make sense, but it doesn't, and it's infuriating.

 _You should just leave_ , you think, in a voice that sounds suspiciously like Zola's. _You're going to ruin him_.

It builds inside of you in an inescapable pressure and before long you can't sit still anymore and you're pacing like a caged animal around the room. You look at the window and think about kicking out the screen and jumping to the pavement below. There's no convenient ladder of balconies for you to scale down, and you wonder if you can survive an eleven story drop. It'd hurt like hell.

You could do it.

This is how he finds you, frustrated and antsy, staring at the window. You're not sure how long he's been standing in the doorway, but when you notice him, you feel ashamed.

"I thought I told you to sit," he says carefully.

Any chance you had is long gone now; the way he looks at you absolutely pins you in place.

"Yeah, well," you start, but it falls flat. There's nothing glib coming to you now. Instead of combative, you feel dizzy and upset.

"I said sit," he says, and you drop onto the edge of the bed like a sack of bricks. Then: "Farther back. Put your hands behind you."

He's holding rope. Real, actual, cotton rope. You should have noticed immediately (your situational awareness is shit). You're not sure what you should feel, and you know even less what you _are_ feeling (tingly, sick, hopeful, scared, unsure, exhausted, trustful, guilty), but you scoot back on the bed anyway and he settles in behind you. When you put your hands behind your back he slides a thumb comfortingly over the pulse in your wrist, then starts tying.

In this moment, with your hands clenched into fists and Steve Rogers laying heavy rope around your arms, you remember what love is for.

When he finishes, he tilts his forehead onto your back and scratches gently at the hair at the nape of your neck. Your scalp tingles in response and you feel like every cell in your body is uncoupling itself.

"I'm sorry," he says, eventually, and the confession surprises you. Why the hell is _he_ apologizing?

"I shouldn't have just... left you like that. I feel stupid."

He drags his nails lightly across the nape of your neck and you shiver.

"S'okay," you say, distracted.

"No. No, it's not. I don't need Sam to tell me it... I just left you. I couldn't figure out what to feel about what... what was happening, so I just left. That was pretty crummy of me."

You rotate your wrists in the rope. His tie is excellent. You wonder with distant amusement if he's been practicing.

"So did you come to any grand emotional conclusion during your time with the Chinese ambassador?" He has both hands in your hair now, massaging vigorously at your scalp. You can't think straight. You're pretty sure this is dirty pool.

"Learned I'll never leave you like that again. Didn't feel right. Felt like..."

 _Like that day on the train_. Neither of you say it.

"So," you say, clearing your throat. "Does this mean I get to kiss you again?"

"I guess it does," he says, sounding nothing more than interestedly contemplative.

He doesn't do anything, though, just keeps running his fingers through your hair.  After a while you realize that you're leaning back against him, half-asleep.

"I'm sorry," he whispers again into the crook of your neck. He sounds heartbroken.

You wrench yourself away from him--hard, but not impossible in the tie--and turn on your knees. You want him to look you in the eye.

"It's okay," you say firmly, and when he shakes his head you say it again. "It's okay. I don't blame you. I..." Something weird rattles around in your brain. "I forgive you."

It has a strangeness to it, and it occurs to you instantly that it carries a different sort of weight for Steve. He stares at the bedspread like all the world's secrets are written in its threads, then lifts hesitant, searching eyes to look at you.

"Now," you say, because you really can't think of anything better to do, "if you don't kiss me, I'm probably going to fall on you and accidentally crush you to death and the American people will burst down the door and skin me alive for depriving them of their national treasure."

It's totally different than the time in the kitchen. He straightens on his knees, puts his hands on either side of your neck, and kisses you softly. He kisses you like he might scare you away, small little kisses that don't linger.

After an agonizing minute of this, you make an involuntary, frustrated noise.

"I didn't travel fifty years into the future to get kissed like a _teenaged girl_ , Steve."

He pulls back and looks offended and then, blessedly, he laughs.

"I think you'll find teenage girls are a fair bit different than how you remember them," he says, and curls the tips of his fingers into your waistband. "You could probably learn a thing or two from one."

"Impossible," you say, smiling, before he kisses you again, and this time it makes sense; he kisses you like he's not afraid you're going jump out the window, he kisses you until you can taste his tongue, until he's so close you think he might be trying to crawl inside of you.

You don't know how it happens, but somewhere in the middle of all the kissing he's got you pressed back into the pillows and is kneeling over your thighs. It burns your shoulders, a bit, but you squirm until it's just uncomfortable enough to ignore.

"Wanna look at--wanna touch you," you gasp out, arching up off the bed. You could probably break the rope if you really wanted to, but more than that, you want him to tell you. You want it to be okay. "Wanna put my fingers on you, my whole god damn mouth."

"Don't think you've earned that," he says, sounding wrecked. It sends a hot lance of pride through you, straight to your cock. _You_ made him sound like that.

"Then what are you gonna do? Stand over me and jerk off 'till I'm covered in it? 'Till you've ruined me? Good thing these aren't your sheets, huh, Stevie?"

" _God_ ," Steve groans, composure wavering.

"Now, now," you say, arching off the bed until your knee meets the inside plane of his thigh. He's as hard as you are, and pride surges within you. His hips move against you almost involuntarily; he looks surprised by his own reaction. You grin. "Pretty sure we went to the same school, and _I_ learned not to take the lord's name in vain."

"You are the most frustrating..." He closes his eyes and looks pained for a minute, then clambers off the bed and leaves you. You have to bite back your initial reaction of fear, that maybe he's not coming back, but you're past that. You trust him. You've _always_ trusted him.

He's through the doorway again in an instant, something clutched in his hand. He settles back over your hips, a comfortable weight, then grips your chin on the pleasurable side of tight.

"Open," he says, breathing hard, "your mouth."

This turn of events electrifies you. So slowly it feels like you're disobeying, you unhinge your jaw and open your mouth and suddenly Steve Rogers is tucking a silk tie between your teeth. He keeps pushing it in until it bumps up against your soft palette and stretches you wide.

You're so aroused it hurts.

"There," he says, flushed with pride. "Isn't that better?"

Every inch of your skin is on fire and you feel dazed. You nod wondrously. All you want is one thing right now, and the clarity of that want surprises you.

 _Please_ , you think desperately. You'd be whimpering it if you could.

That's when Steve Rogers leans back between your legs and pops the button on your jeans open, slides down the zipper, and all but rips your pants off. He tosses them off the bed and slides his gaze down your body, shirt rumpled up around your ribs, cock leaking warm against your thigh.

 There's a hollow space above your hip bone that he drags his thumb across now, then across your pelvic bone in a reverent caress. You're thinking of all the filthy things you want to do to him, but then he leans forward and puts his mouth where his fingers were and every transient thought in your head disappears.  Steve's weight on you is heavy, and his tongue is slick and warm. He presses small kisses to the trail of your pubic bone, licking up, then down, then, to your utter shock and complete pleasure, nips at the sensitive skin on your thigh.

Frustratingly, Steve is still clothed. Part of you wants to be able to flip him onto his back and cut his pants off. You want to take agonizingly long minutes pulling his shirt off, teasing at the hem of his underwear. You think about taking his fly in your mouth and pulling it down slowly, nuzzling into his hip.

But then he slides curious fingers over your dick and even though it's sort of painful and sticky and not altogether pleasant, the friction electrifies you. You desperately try to thrust up into his grip but he's not small anymore; his weight keeps you firmly pressed into the mattress. He looks smugly, infuriatingly pleased.

You want to cuss, want to babble obscenities until he gives you what you want, but then he takes his hand off of you and licks a wide stripe into his palm and it's the dirtiest thing you think you've ever seen. When he touches you again, it's slippery and warm and he runs his thumb across the slit of your cock and you have to bite hard on the silk in your mouth to not come right there.

Then he's got your dick against his body, rocking you slowly against the bulge in his pants, mimes the rhythm of his hand in his hips and it's absolutely agony. You want him to speed up, move more, do more than keep you futilely horny.

"You know," he says tenderly, "I'm not sure what it is about the rope, but I like you like this. Tied up for me. Just for me. Maybe this way I won't lose you again. You'll always be here for me, won't you, Bucky?"

You whimper your agreement and strain uselessly, try to rock up into his hand, but it doesn't work, you don't move an inch..

He leans forward like this, one hand sliding agonizingly slowly over you, and presses his other hand against your makeshift gag. His thumb wraps under your chin and his pinky slides up against your nose and it's suddenly a little harder to breathe.

"It occurs to me," he says, inches away from your face, breath breaking hot over his hand, "that I've misappropriated your mouth for the task at hand."

 _Jesus_ , you think, like he might come down from the clear blue sky and spare you this endless agony of Steve Rogers not fucking you.

"If you say anything, make even the smallest noise, I'll be very unhappy," he says sternly. "And you don't want to make me unhappy, do you?"

You shake your head.  

His hand softens on your mouth, then pulls the silk out so slowly you want to cry. You think finally he'll scoot up, kneel over you, let you take his dick onto your aching tongue, but he just slips his middle fingers into the warm cavern of your mouth and commands, "lick."

You're so fucking amazed and flushed hot, and when he presses his fingers against your tongue you coat them obediently. He gives you an indulgent smile when he pulls them out of your mouth and saliva strings out across your jaw.

When he presses the first finger gently into you, you tremble violently. Every muscle in your body goes taught. You feel strung out and hot.

"Relax," he whispers, and takes you in hand, rubbing lazy lines across the head of your dick. It feels divine, and it's certainly good enough to distract you. "You're doing good, so good for me." Steve Rogers must be a fucking mind reader, because just when you think you're about to lose every ounce of self-control you have left, he stops sliding his fingers up and down your cock and goes back to cleaving you open, inch by agonizing inch.

An undignified sound catches in the back of your throat, but you stay obediently quiet. You think he might hear the sound of it, because he glances up, gives you a pleased look, and presses another finger into you. Then, to your absolute shock and awe, pulls his fingers out halfway, leans down, and licks at the place where his fingers meet your body.

You bite your lip instead of gasping and drop your head back. You can't watch anymore; if you watch, you'll never get to the grand finale.

Then he's pushing you--just puts his hands on your hip and bodily rolls you over--and it's awkward and weird until you get a shoulder under your chin and manage to leverage yourself up a bit and you're panting and your ribs hurt and you want him to go back to touching you so bad you think you might burst if he doesn't.

 _Please_ , you think, in a unbroken chant. _Please, please, please_.

Behind you, you hear the telltale crackle of a zipper, and you can't help but look anymore, you just turn to stare at him, watch him slip his dick out of his pants and licks his palm so, so, so slowly and then he's pushing into you just as slowly. It burns like hell, and chafes a little, and then he just... sits there. Leans over you, breathing hard through flushed, parted lips, looking for all the world like he's going to eat you.

He looks proud.

When he's finally in all the way, he leans forward and kisses your neck, murmurs praise against your skin. After a few seconds of this, he tightens his hands in your hair and careens your head back. He half-kisses half-bites the exposed flesh of your neck and Steve Rogers--glorious, perfect, golden, Captain America Steve Rogers--rocks against you and whispers filthy things into your ear.

"Good boy," he whispers, throaty, and you close your eyes so tightly you see stars. "You're doing so good." He takes a hand from your burning scalp and puts it on your throat; he slides a line of kisses against the straining muscles in your shoulder, more tongue and teeth than lips.

"Want you to beg for it," he says and it's like a dam breaks in you, and all you can _do_ is beg for it.

"Please," you whimper. "Please, god, I need you to touch me, don't wanna come like this, want your hands on me, _please_ , Stevie--"

He laughs against your neck and reaches a hand under your body, runs a thumb over your leaking slit and coats your dick with it and squeezes up and down and it's the best thing you've ever felt, trapped between his hand and his mouth and his cock.

"Please," you beg again, and your voice breaks.

And this is it, this is what you've been waiting for, for someone to tell you yes when you ask, and when Steve Rogers scrapes teeth against the hollow space under your ear and says _it's okay, it's okay, let go_ , you shatter.

 

After, he unties your and, even though the world is still a hazy blend of colors and you feel like the bed has completely dropped out from under you and you couldn't give less of a shit about how your shoulders feel, he stretches out your arms and rubs gentle, calming circles into burning muscle.

"I want to show you something," he says after a minute, and slides off the bed. You're too content to notice how long he's gone, just when he slides back in bed and puts a stack of something in your hand. Moving hurts a little, and you're not a big fan, but you pull them in front of your face and try to draw some sort of recognition.

"I wrote a letter to you every day," he says quietly. "Every day that you were lost. Couldn't exactly send them, so I kept them. There's..." He ducks his head and runs a hand through his hair. "There's a lot more."

You're holding maybe fifty small brown envelopes. It doesn't add up. You frown.

"I wasn't gone that long."

"Not the first time," he agrees. "Like I said, there's a lot more."

You realize with dim certainty that he means the whole shebang, that he's been writing to you every day that he's been awake and you haven't. The time semantics are fuzzy, but either way, it makes your head hurt.

Your heart hurt.

"Look, I don't know... if this makes sense to you, Buck, but I'm going to make sure you understand, starting right now." He brushes his hand through your hair and looks sad, but content. "You are meant for more than just killing," he tells you, and in the calm aftermath, you think you might believe him. 

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bazanite) if you want to talk about tragic bucky barnes.


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